The Champions League came back this week with 18 games in three nights, 69 goals, a debut nobody will forget, and the return of the most quotable manager in the sport. Now it goes quiet again for a month. Matchday 2 does not arrive until October 13, which leaves plenty of time to argue about what we just saw.
Here are the five things that actually mattered from Champions League Matchday 1.
1. Mourinho won ugly, which is the whole point
Jose Mourinho is 63, he is back at Real Madrid 13 years after he left, and his first Champions League night at the Bernabeu was against Inter, the club he took to the treble in 2010. The script did not disappoint. Real Madrid beat Inter 2-1, and they did it in the most Mourinho way imaginable.
Inter had 64 percent of the ball and more shots. Madrid had Thibaut Courtois, playing his 100th Champions League match, and two moments of ruthlessness. Kylian Mbappe raced onto a loose ball and finished in the 14th minute, his 71st goal in the competition, which puts him level with Raul as the fifth-highest scorer in Champions League history. Nine minutes later Inter goalkeeper Josep Martinez dawdled on a back-pass and Federico Valverde robbed him and rolled it in. Carlos Augusto pulled one back late, and Madrid held on.
That is not a blueprint that wins you style points. It is a blueprint that wins Champions League games, and Florentino Perez did not bring Mourinho home for style points.
2. Como just had the best debut this competition has seen
Seven years ago Como were in Italy’s fourth tier. On Thursday night they played their first ever Champions League match, at their little lakeside stadium in Serie A, and beat RB Leipzig 4-1.
Martin Baturina scored inside 15 minutes, set up Tasos Douvikas for the second before halftime, then Assane Diao ran beyond Willi Orban for the third and Maximo Perrone added a fourth. Cesc Fabregas, who took Como into the top four of Serie A last season above Juventus and AC Milan, is now the manager of only the fourth Italian club to win its European Cup debut, joining Juventus, Milan and Udinese.
Watch Nico Paz. The Argentine playmaker is the reason half of Europe has been circling Como for a year, and on a Champions League night he looked like he belonged in the round of 16, not the league phase. Fabregas has spent this week telling his players to enjoy it for five minutes and then move on. Good luck with that. A trip to Barcelona is on the schedule, and the whole town will be talking about nothing else for a month.
3. Arsenal picked up where they left off, results included
Last season ended for Arsenal in Budapest with a 1-1 draw and a 4-3 penalty shootout loss to PSG in the final. That was the closest the club has ever come to winning this competition, and the first test of whether it left a scar was a trip to Napoli.
Arsenal won 1-0, and it was harder than it should have been. They generated more than four goals’ worth of expected goals against a Napoli side that managed 0.22, wasted big chances through Bukayo Saka and Mikel Merino, and needed Martin Odegaard to break the deadlock with 10 minutes left, a rifled strike in off the left post. Another clean sheet, another win. Mikel Arteta’s team has become the kind of side that does not need to play well to take three points, which, as we wrote about the Premier League title race last spring, is what champions look like.
4. The favorites are in a hurry
The scoreboard at the top of the table reads like a warning. PSG, the back-to-back holders, opened with a 6-1 win over Slovan Bratislava. Bayern Munich beat Bodo/Glimt 5-0 with goals from Harry Kane, Jamal Musiala, Alphonso Davies and two from Michael Olise, which is a startling range of scorers for one night. Barcelona hammered Feyenoord 5-1, Raphinha scored early again, and he now has eight goals in his last five games for the club. Manchester United, back in the competition, beat Sabah 4-0 through Matheus Cunha, Bruno Fernandes, Benjamin Sesko and Lisandro Martinez.
Then there is Erling Haaland. Two goals at Porto in a 2-0 win for Manchester City takes him to 59 Champions League goals in 59 Champions League games. Enzo Maresca’s City have questions elsewhere, and Gianluigi Donnarumma’s distribution drew nervous reviews, but the equation at the top of the pitch is unchanged. When Haaland plays, City are a different team. When he does not, they are a different team in the other direction.
Liverpool got there the hard way. Marcos Llorente put Atletico Madrid ahead at Anfield after 19 minutes, Dominik Szoboszlai leveled before halftime, and Alexis Mac Allister thumped in the winner five minutes after the break. Andoni Iraola’s side is still working out how to fit Florian Wirtz and Szoboszlai into the same midfield, but they showed the one thing you cannot coach: they were losing, and they did not panic.
5. The rest of the table is going to be a mess, in a good way
Aston Villa’s John McGinn scored the first goal of the entire campaign in a 3-2 win at Club Brugge. Borussia Dortmund beat Villarreal 3-2 with all five goals in the second half. Real Betis came from two down at Lille to win 3-2, their first Champions League victory in 21 years, with Marc Bartra scoring twice and Ethan Mbappe seeing red for the hosts. AEK Athens won a Champions League game for the first time in 20 years. Eight of the 18 games were decided by a single goal, and the 36-team league phase has once again delivered exactly what it promised: no easy nights and a table nobody can predict.
What happens now
Nothing, for a while. Matchday 2 runs October 13 and 14, followed quickly by Matchday 3 a week later, and the league phase closes on January 27. The final is on Saturday, June 5, 2027 at the Metropolitano in Madrid.
In the United States, every match streams on Paramount+, with select games on CBS. If you are new to the format, the top eight in the 36-team table go straight to the round of 16, ninth through 24th go to a two-legged playoff in February, and everyone else goes home. After Matchday 1, PSG, Bayern and Barcelona lead on goal difference. It is a long way from mattering. But this is the competition that gave us those semifinal nights last May, and after this week it already feels like it is building toward something again.
